I stumbled on the site DemonTales.com today.  It’s another paranormal blog, and it mostly focuses on videos.  A lot of the footage seems fake, but it’s still fun to browse and check out.  Here’s one that didn’t set off my bullshit detector:

Check out the site if you have some time to kill.  It’s pretty cool!

My previous post was made just a few hours ago, so please don’t forget to read that if you missed it.

Cutting to the chase: I got a video of myself having an out of body experience, but it doesn’t look like anything amazing is going on from the video :-P. I suppose I should be bummed out or something, but honestly I just feel really excited! I can’t believe I was able to catch the experience on tape - even though there isn’t anything amazing in the video itself.

I’ve uploaded the uneventful video to YouTube, for those that really want to watch it. The second half is a zoomed-in high-contrast version.

(Note that in my excitement, I accidentally typed the timestamp of 3:55am, when it was actually 3:38am - I must have been thinking of my previous night’s OBE when finalizing the video).

I had been trying to get an OBE on video for about a week, and had just recently perfected my technique. Last night I had an OBE, but it turned out my camera ran out of tape mere minutes before the OBE actually happened. This night, I tried again. I found another setting that extended my tape length from 92 to 94 minutes (by changing the sound from 16-bit, to 12-bit). I pushed the record button, and jumped in bed ASAP - in order not to lose any time on the tape.

I tranced out from 2:05 to about 2:45, listening to music. I shut the music off, then did some more meditation for another 30 minutes. Then I rolled over to my side in order to get more comfortable, and attempt an OBE.

I fell asleep and started dreaming. I was dreaming I was laying in one of my old beds, trying to trance out :-). My mother came into the room and laid next to me. She started talking to me about my sister, and I was getting annoyed, because I was really focusing on trancing out, and wanted to get the OBE on video. My desire to OBE was so strong that even my dream-self kept the mission alive :-).

Eventually I told my mom about my frustration, and she didn’t say anything - just gave me this really strong bear hug. It was really painful, because it wasn’t a nice hug or anything. She grabbed me and started squeezing the breathe out of me. This snapped me out of the dream state, and propelled me into having an OBE. I “woke up” out of body, but laying inside my body.

My right arm was free to move. I checked the clock (while out), and it was 3:38am. I did some quick math and realized I only had a minute or two left on the tape! I started to frantically wave my right arm, and tried to escape my body, but I was mostly stuck (probably because I was trying so hard :-P). All I could do was wave my right arm. So I just kept doing that. After about a minute of that, I jumped back into my body, and wiggled around to wake myself up. I got up, waved at the camera (with my left arm, instead of my right), in order to show the camera where I had just been waving.

I got over and looked at the camera - Tape End! Oh no!, I thought :-). I was about to flip out, thinking I had just missed my OBE for a second night in a row. When I checked the tape, I saw that the tape actually ended right after I had woken up and waved at the camera. I literally had about a 10 second buffer :-). The end of the video on YouTube is the exact end of the tape itself (I just trimmed off the first 92 minutes of trancing out).

It’s 5:40am now, and I really need to get ready for work. I just played the tape again, and it’s getting corrupted for some reason. There are large green bands across the video. Luckily I was able to extract and watch the end before the data corruption took place. I’ll have to mess around with it to see if the tape is really corrupt or not. At least I have the digital data :-).

I have to pass this link along… it’s totally sweet.

It seems the Berkeley, the University of California, is posting lectures on YouTube. Full lessons, ranging from biology, physics, and search engine technology. Right now I’m watching the quantum physics series. The link is here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ucberkeley

Here’s one of the 200+ videos on their directory:

Enjoy, science nerds!

My dad had an idea for promoting A Little Weird, and wanted to turn it into a short video.  Somehow he convinced me to play along :-P.  I was skeptical at first, but I’m fairly pleased at the outcome now that we’ve finished.  That’s me in the video.  Please leave comments because my father wants to know what everyone thinks about it.

Here is an old story that I like to keep handy.  Every time I get in a discussion with a “skeptic”, they eventually use the line that “if psychic abilities were real, I would have seen it on the news”.  I like to give them this clip immediately afterwards :-).

(Taken from TRV.COM)

Faith is tough.  Faith is something I struggle with.

Really, I believe there is only one application of faith.  Having faith that things will be ok.  Things will work out.

It’s interesting to see how different root beliefs will filter their way through to behavior.  I had a friend who was very controlling and manipulative.  She was two-face, and always had to take control of a situation and make things turn out exactly how she wanted them to.  One day we were talking about things we struggle with, and she mentioned that she knew she was controlling, but she couldn’t help it.

I asked her: Do you believe in God?  The question really threw her off balance.  She started saying that she was raised Christian, and while she didn’t take religion too seriously, she was pretty sure she believed in God.  I told her that her controlling behavior could be a byproduct of not believing in God - that when someone believes in God, they have faith that things will work out on their own.  But without a belief in God, things don’t work out on their own unless you control the situation and make them work out for you.

She looked at me in shock, then walked away.  (Telepathy, anyone?).

Without faith, we become controlling, or feel victimized.  With faith, we allow things to happen naturally, and we get through tough times knowing that everything will work out.  Faith is good.

I believe that modern religion has hijacked this idea of faith to include other things.  When someone doubts the Christian God, they are told to have more faith.  Faith shouldn’t be used to remove doubt about a subject.  If I start to doubt the existence of gravity, a scientist doesn’t tell me to have more faith.  If I doubt that President Bush is doing a good job, it’s not because I don’t have enough faith.  If you doubt something about Christianity, then explore the doubt.  Don’t bury it out of fear of not being “faithful”.

Faith in the future though… faith that things will work out and be ok.  That’s where the value is.  It stomps out fear and worry in a heartbeat.  It removes the desire to control everything.  It tells us that things happen for a reason.  It allows us to let go and move with time, instead of against it.

“We just had a near life experience.”

Today I present two short posts in one:

The first thing to note is that I just had an out-of-arm-experience.  I have these every once in a while.  Someone called me at 9:45am speaking Spanish that woke me up.  I went back to bed in a weird state of mind.  I did dream some, but I also experienced laying in bed messing around with my arms.

The experience went on and off for about 20 minutes.  I was laying in bed, looking at my wall, and my arms were “out” of my body.  I couldn’t see them, but I could sense where they were.  I moved them in front of my face, trying to see them, but no luck.  I felt my face with my hands, and my hands felt my face, but my face didn’t feel my hands.  It was pretty cool.  I had an experience like it before, years ago when I was 16 years old.

I almost decided not to post about it, because it was a mundane experience, but there was one important feature.  On my wall, I have playing cards taped to it for decoration.  While having these out of arm experiences, I focused on one of the playing cards to keep my consciousness aware.  When I woke up, it dawned on me that I should check that specific card to see if I perceived it correctly.  While in the bathroom, I predicted the card would be dark with two symbols on the front.  When I checked, I was correct - it was exactly as I remembered it.  This isn’t die-hard proof of anything, however it is an interesting thing to note.

In other news… Steorn, the guys who claim to have discovered perpetual motion, had a public demonstration July 6th, 2007.  Unfortunately, they couldn’t get their technology to work.  Here is a video of Sean McCarthy making excuses.  I didn’t watch the whole thing because of the bad quality and length, but maybe someone else is interested:

I stumbled upon this movie: Zeitgeist Movie.com

It’s really interesting. If you have 2 hours, I definitely recommend it. Please post your responses in comments if you do decide to watch it :-).

EDIT: In other news… I lost this round. I hate losing. I mean… sure, I only lost $1, so it’s no big deal. But it pisses me off.

I got zero numbers correct.

Why does this piss me off? Because I know I can win. I know I can. But I can’t reconcile the fact that I’m losing. I mean, if I look at the numbers, I’m winning overall. I’m still making a profit over the months I’ve been playing, and I’m shattering the mathematical odds. Blah blah blah. No jackpot though. Profit is nice, but it’s not my goal. My goal is the jackpot.

I am going to win. Each loss adds energy to my win.

Bloody hell. I know exactly how I’m going to go about it as well. I know exactly where I’m making my “mistake”, if you want to call it that. The solution is murky, but the “mistake” is clear as day.

If they can do it, I can do it. If I can do it, then I will do it. Simple as that.